You may have seen it lately. There has been a meme going around saying the cup you drink you coffee out of matters.
There are a few ways to take that statement. Maybe it’s about what you use as your favourite cup. Maybe it’s about the fact that the cup can effect the taste of the coffee. For now, I’m going to not get all judgmental about what sort of cups you like best. But there might be something to the last part.
Anyone who is a fan of the Jack Reacher novels probably knows two things. One, Tom Cruise is far too short to play Jack Reacher. But we won’t get into that now. The second thing is that the vessel can have an effect on the taste of your coffee.
In at least one of the novels, I forget which now, the author goes into this quite extensively. There are many factors. You don’t want a cup or a mug too large. That allows the beverage to cool too much before you finish it. You don’t want a material to heavy or thick. In fact, I believe the conclusion was that a fine porcelain cup is the ideal vessel for coffee. But other thin materials can work fairly well, too.
This being a work of fiction, I didn’t pay much attention to it, but apparently there is some truth there. The shape and size of the vessel in which you drink your coffee can have an effect on the taste of the beverage. Glass doesn’t really effect the taste that much directly, but it does allow the beverage to cool faster than porcelain, so flavour can be effected. Take out cups can pick up other flavours, so they can effect the taste.
Most of us have a favourite mug or cup. It might not be the best for the purpose, but it’s what we like. I have one mug in the house I always use. It’s not new. It’s not pretty. It’s an old Gary Larson Far Side mug. The one with the two guys fishing and the nuclear explosion. I like it.
We have many other mugs in the house. Many of them are square. Well, they’re round on the inside and kind of squarish on the outside. I try to avoid them. I’m sure they’re very cool, but they don’t fit my mouth.
So I stick with my Far Side mug. I have no idea what that says about me, but I don’t dribble my coffee down the front of my shirt when I use it and the coffee tastes the way I expect it to.
Maybe I should be using something smaller. Maybe something thinner. Maybe something far classier. But I like the mug I have. Although I may have to start watching thrift stores for a back up. They don’t last forever. And my coffee just wouldn’t taste the same without it.